


lost in towns that were my home

by myeyesarenotblue



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Supernatural Elements, Vanya Hargreeves-centric, am i giving vanya new powers on top of the ones she already has?, no beta we die like ben, yeah maybe so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26589712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myeyesarenotblue/pseuds/myeyesarenotblue
Summary: Ben and Five are standing right in front of her.Herdeadbrother Ben, that’s been gone for months, and hermissingbrother Five, that’s been gone for so long he might as well be dead now.“How are you here?” Vanya blurts.They share a concerned little glance, and then Five says, “What do you mean?”
Comments: 31
Kudos: 235





	1. We love you, Vanya

**Author's Note:**

> forgive me father for i am posting yet another wip
> 
> this takes place a couple months after ben dies, everyone's still living at the academy

Things get weird one night, a random night, right after Vanya goes to sleep. 

The thing is- 

She’s in bed already, curled up under her comforter, and she’s warm, and comfortable, and her pillow’s never felt softer, and she’s in that hazy state of mind, not asleep but not awake all the way either. It’s one of those nice days in which her mind actually lets her rest peacefully instead of replaying some traumatic memory on a loop behind her eyelids. 

She’s on the verge of sleep. 

She- 

She remembers, a flash brought out of the blue, that she didn’t take her night dose. 

And she groans, opens her eyes and rolls onto her back. 

The room is pitch black. 

_ She’s on the verge of sleep.  _

Has she ever skipped a single dose before? Probably not. She’s a little-  _ afraid _ , of what could happen with her sanity. Dad and Pogo tell her her anxiety was off the charts when she was a kid, before the pills. 

She should probably get up, go fetch her pill bottle from where she left it in her desk’s drawer. 

The room is pitch black. 

She’s  _ very  _ warm and  _ very _ comfortable. 

What’s a single dose, anyway? 

It probably won’t kill her. 

Probably. 

She can just take the morning dose a little earlier, no harm. 

* 

Vanya wakes up. 

She’s not in her bedroom. 

She sits up, stiffly, looks around. 

It’s- 

She’s almost completely sure she’s still in the Academy, because she’s lived in that house her whole goddamned life and, really, not many places manage that decoration style, all bare brick walls and peeling paint, polished floors, opulent light fixtures. 

It’s the Academy. She’s sure of it. 

But it’s  _ not _ her room. 

Which- 

Vanya can’t begin to fathom why the hell she’s not in her room. 

This room is bigger than hers by  _ miles _ , at least four times its size. Nicer, too, with a giant oval window right in front of the bed, letting the morning light filter through and hit the place just right, melting any harsh colors into something warm and inviting. It looks lived in, too, with bookcases all around stuffed top to bottom with rows and rows and rows of books and notebooks and random knickknacks. 

There are posters on the walls. Of movies, musicians, random, pretty things. 

She can see plants, too, seas of green and dots of color. 

Vanya- 

Vanya can’t begin to fathom why the hell she’s not in her room. 

She’s not even sure  _ where _ she is. How many bedrooms do they even have? Forty? Fifty? She hasn’t been into every single bedroom in the house. 

There’s an oval window, though. 

The only oval windows she remembers are all the way in that other wing that they barely even use. There’s a fuzzy memory, somewhere in the back of her mind, of seven giggly children running around, playing hide and seek and opening doors at random. 

She stands up slowly, realizes even the bed she was lying on is  _ bigger _ and overall better than her own, the comforter thicker and stamped with vibrant, pretty colors. She- decides she can wonder where all these random nice things came from sometime later, when she’s not busy trying not to freak out and start screaming bloody murder left and right. 

There are two identical doors in one of the walls, and then another one, in the other side. 

She heads to the closest one and- 

Closet.  _ Walk-in _ closet with more clothes than she’s ever seen in one place. 

She shuts that door, opens the next one, and it’s- 

A giant bathroom, with a giant shower, and a giant bathtub, and a truly ungodly amount of soaps, and shampoos, and perfumes, and colorful, mysterious jars. 

Vanya takes a breath, shuts that door, too. 

She vaguely wonders if they have a goddamned stowaway, just a random person who decided to take advantage of the large house and little security, and now they’ve decided to kidnap her and she’s going to die in her own home, feet away from her family. 

But- 

She heads towards the other door, twists the knob. 

It opens easily. 

She steps outside carefully, fearfully, fully convinced  _ something _ must have happened that culminated in her waking up somewhere weird. 

That halls are unfamiliar until they’re not, and she realizes that yes, she  _ is _ in the other wing of the house, in that little maze of hallways they all used to play in when they were little children, eager to explore. It’s not quite nostalgia, what the curtains and the floors make her feel, but it’s something near. It’s an ache, dull and all consuming, and it makes her miss  _ Five _ of all people with something fierce. 

She walks, and she walks, and just when she’s nearing the staircase- 

“Vanya!” 

She jumps half a foot in the air, turns wildly around until she catches sight of a blur of navy blue and dark gray. “Klaus,” she says, breathing out, when she realizes it’s him. 

Klaus is- 

Klaus is  _ smiling _ , open, and wide, and sincere, and Vanya has the sudden realization that she hadn’t seen a single one of his smiles in- a while, now. Since Ben died. Probably even before that. 

None of them have smiled much, since Ben died. 

But Klaus? 

He shrunk in on himself, pulled away from anyone and everyone, stopped joking, and laughing, and  _ smiling _ , turned into a zombie, a creature that only bothers to show its face at dinnertime on occasion, when there are no more drugs to swallow, to drown itself in. 

“Klaus,” Vanya repeats, and she doesn’t really wanna pop whatever bubble Klaus is in, that has him looking so happy and carefree, but she’s got some questions that need answers, “I- Klaus, did something happen last night?” 

“What do you mean?” Klaus asks, innocently, still smiling. 

“I woke up in a weird room,” Vanya explains, slowly, “I have no idea why, or- or  _ how  _ I got there, even. I guess something must have happened and I can’t remember.” 

“Oh, I know!” Klaus singsongs, and he puts an arm around her shoulders, starts guiding her towards the staircase and beyond, “Maybe you sleepwalked!” 

Vanya frowns. “Maybe? But the room was-  _ very  _ weird. I think someone’s living in there.” 

That gets Klaus’ attention. He turns to her, lifts an eyebrow. “Where?” 

“I don’t know,” Vanya says. “One of those rooms near the back, with the oval windows.” 

And Klaus- 

He  _ laughs. _

“Oh, silly!” he says, nonsensically, still laughing, “That’s your room!” 

“Uh,” Vanya mutters, “Klaus, you know that’s not my room. My room is right next to yours.” 

Klaus laughs, and laughs, and laughs, “Of course not!” he says, “The room next to mine is too small, Van, and you deserve the best of the best! A pretty room for a pretty girl!” 

“I-” Vanya starts, slowly, blinking up at him, “Are you high right now?” 

Klaus sighs, still smiling softly, “High on life, sister, nothing more,” he says, dreamily, and he grabs her arm, starts tugging her towards the dining room. “Now come along, we were all waiting for you. Mom made a feast for you!” 

Vanya- 

Follows. 

Because, really, what the hell else can she do? 

He’s gotta be high. 

A sort of high that leaves him happy, and giggly, and prone to hallucinations. She’s just gotta play along until it wears off and he goes back to staring numbly at walls all day long. 

Klaus lets go of her arm when they reach the dining room’s doors, and he pushes at them forcefully until they both snap open, big, and tall, and wide. 

The first thing Vanya zeroes in on is the table. She really can’t quite place it at first, for a fraction of a second, because it’s just their dining table, the same one they’ve eaten in every single day of their lives since she’s got use of conscience, and it’s got  _ food  _ on it, like it does every morning, but- 

But it’s- 

It’s not just food, individual portions of some dull and boring thing thrown around with no care into an empty table, cold and uninviting. 

It’s- 

_ Mountains of food.  _

It’s fruits, and meats, and cakes, and desserts, all colorful and beautiful, and the table doesn’t look empty or cold or uninviting in the slightest, no, instead it’s all arranged into pretty shapes, and there are flowers and tablecloths, and- 

“What?” she blurts, honest, and she turns towards Klaus, questioning. 

Klaus  _ smiles _ in return. 

And she opens her mouth to ask what the hell is going on, but then she realizes her bunch of siblings are there, in the room, and they all start piling towards her with smiles on their faces and open arms, and all she can hear is a chorus of –  _ “Vanya!” “Vanya!” “Where were you?” “We missed you!”  _

She huffs out, twists her head to tell them to either shut up or tell her what’s going on, but- 

Standing there, right in front of her, is Five. 

Standing there, right in front of her, is Ben. 

She freezes, takes a step back. 

“Vanya,” Five says, a smile on his face, “You’re late for breakfast.” 

And then Ben’s shaking his head side to side, mock disappointment in his eyes, “The food’s getting cold, you know. Mom made it just for you.” 

Vanya tries to speak. 

Only a faint croak comes out. 

Allison frowns, twists her head. “Vanya?” 

And Vanya- 

Takes another step back, bites hard on her tongue. 

“What is it, Vanya?” Diego asks. 

And then it’s Luther. “Are you okay?” 

Vanya snaps her eyes shut, counts up to  _ one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, _ and then opens them back up. 

Five and Ben are standing right in front of her. 

Her  _ dead _ brother Ben, that’s been gone for months, and her  _ missing _ brother Five, that’s been gone for so long he might as well be dead now. 

They- 

“How are you here?” Vanya blurts. 

They share a concerned little glance, like  _ they’re _ the ones who have any business feeling confused and distressed and bewildered. 

Five frowns. “What do you mean?” 

“You’re dead,” Vanya says, plainly, and Five’s eyebrows go up to his forehead. “No,” Vanya shakes her head, swallows the sudden lump in her throat, points at Ben. “No,  _ you’re _ dead, you’re-” she points at Five, now. “You’re as good as dead, I- I don’t-” 

“Vanya,” Klaus says, placing a hand on her shoulder, “Are you okay?” 

Vanya keeps shaking her head. “What’s going on?” 

“Nothing’s going on.” 

“ _ Something’s going on _ ,” Vanya grits, and it takes all of her willpower not to burst into tears. “First I wake up in that stupid room, and then you’re acting all- I don’t know,  _ weird _ , and then the food, and now-” 

She can’t really bring herself to finish the sentence. 

Five and Ben are standing right in front of her. 

“Nothing’s going on,” and this time it’s Allison, voice soft, eyes softer, and there’s a quality to her smile that Vanya can’t quite recognize, “That’s just your room you’re talking about,” she says, matter of factly, “And this?” she gestures vaguely to the table, “All of your favorite foods? They’re for you.” 

Vanya- 

Swallows, bites her lip. “Why?” 

Allison smiles, wide, wide, wide. “Because we love you.” 

And-  _ god _ , what does it say about her that hearing those words puts everything on hold? That something is very obviously going on, something bad, probably, something that shouldn’t be, and she-? 

She suddenly can’t focus on anything but those words, so innocuous, so easy, on Allison’s lips. 

She likes to think her self-esteem isn’t actually  _ that  _ low, and she likes to think her family  _ does  _ love her, in their own stunted and sometimes plain disturbing kind of way, even if they go out of their leagues not to show it and they’ve never outrightly said it before. But- 

_ We love you.  _

_ We love you.  _

_ We love you.  _

She doesn’t know what her face does, then, but Allison seems to like it, melting her smile into something pleased and relieved. “We’re so glad you’re here, Vanya.” 

And Vanya- 

She must be dreaming, she realizes. 

She must be dreaming. 

Because there’s just no way her family would ever be this nice to her. 

Five and Ben? She could probably find a rational explanation if she tried hard enough. Maybe they’re- clones, or robots, like Mom, or something, or maybe they just randomly dug their way out of their graves and that’s that. She could probably find a rational explanation. 

But- 

“Don’t you wanna sit down before the food gets cold, Vanya?” Allison asks, a soft smile in her lips, “You can tell us how your day’s been so far, we’d love to hear it.” 

She’s dreaming. 

Vanya’s dreaming. 

She- feels  _ awake _ , but- 

She did forget to take her pills. 

Maybe all people have dreams that feel this sharp and real and authentic and she’s just never known because her pills make her brain fuzzy. 

It’s either that, or she’s having a  _ very _ vivid hallucination. 

Allison watches her, tilts her head. “Mom’s gonna be upset if this all goes to waste.” 

“Uh,” Vanya says, smartly. 

She’s just- 

Is she supposed to play along? Sit down as if everything’s fine and pretend her heart’s not beating out of her chest? 

Then Five steps forward. 

And it’s  _ Five _ . 

It’s him. 

It’s his face and his hair and his smile, “Vanya,” he mutters, and it’s  _ his _ voice, “Please, c’mon.” 

Vanya suddenly can’t find her voice. 

She just stands there, staring dumbly. 

“I’ve missed you,” Five says, earnestly, fervently, and then he glances briefly to the side, to Ben. “We’ve missed you so much, Vanya, you have no idea.” 

And suddenly Ben’s there, too, and- 

And it’s not like Five, because Five left, and she does have horrendous nightmares,  _ wondering, wondering, wondering _ , terrified of whatever the hell could’ve happened to him that he couldn’t come back. 

Ben is different. 

Ben is dead. 

She saw what was left of him with her own eyes, and what was left of him wasn’t her brother. It was blood, and gore, and pieces of something that could no longer be described as a human being. 

“We love you, Vanya,” Ben says. His eyes are wide open, full of emotion. “Please stay.” 

She stays. 

Then- 

* 

She wakes up. 

She’s in the middle of shoving spoonfuls of the absolute  _ best _ cherry pie she’s ever tasted in her entire life, listening to the beautiful sounds of Five, and Ben, and the rest of her siblings, Klaus and Diego and Allison and even  _ Luther _ laughing and laughing, barking out jokes and manic cackles, acting like children, like a family, like everything she’s always wished for, and then- 

She wakes up. 

Just like that. 

She’s in her bedroom. 

Her  _ actual _ bedroom. Tiny, and cramped, and overwhelmingly devoid of life. 

And- 

She was dreaming. 

Of course, she was dreaming. 

She always knew she was dreaming. 

Still, it doesn’t really come as a surprise when a heavy weight settles over her chest, and when she suddenly realizes that’s it- that’s it- that’s Five, and that’s Ben, gone forever all over again, and then she wants to scream and she wants to cry, and she would,  _ she would _ , but if she didn’t really scream and cry in the funeral then why would she now? 

She can still taste the cherry pie. 


	2. I've missed you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to all the people that haven't seen or read coraline... these sure aren't links to watch the [ movie ](https://myflixer.to/watch-movie/coraline-17390.2519204) or download the [ book, ](https://pdfduck.com/coraline-by-neil-gaiman-pdf/) why, that would be piracy and that's illegal 😩😳
> 
> ANYWAY this is only going to be like.. VERY loosely based on coraline, honestly, that's why i didn't tag it !! i'm just borrowing the whole "oh no a weird version of reality where everyone loves me but then not so much" thing

During breakfast, Vanya can’t stop staring at Klaus. 

It’s just- 

She can see him, so, so clearly in her mind, red cheeks and bright eyes, throwing joke after joke and acting without a single care in the world, linking his arms with Ben’s, and Diego’s, and Luther’s and Allison’s, desperately attempting to invade Five’s space despite his threats not to. 

She can see him, happy. 

He’s slumped in his chair. 

He’s picking at his food, not really eating. 

Diego’s thrown pieces of fruit at him twice already since the meal began and he’s barely even reacted. 

He’s just- 

He’s different. 

He’s different, he’s not her brother. Her brother was that person in her dream, vibrant and kindhearted, not whoever’s sitting next to her at the table, a hollow shell. 

Vanya takes a sip of orange juice, takes a bite out of her toast. 

Five disappeared five years ago. 

Ben died three months ago. 

They're not really coping all that well. 

They don’t really talk to each other anymore- not that Vanya was ever included much, in their hushed conversations in deserted hallways, their secret handshakes and dumb games. They just don’t talk anymore. Ever. At all. 

And- 

And it’s not just her, being excluded once more. 

She can see from afar how her siblings’ relationships among themselves are broken, too, how they don’t look each other in the eye, how they try but never manage. 

Klaus has been a walking corpse since Ben died. 

They’ve all been kind of a mess, but Klaus more so, if that’s possible. She doesn’t like that hollow look in his eyes, like he couldn’t care less what’s going on around him. 

She doesn’t like him, like this. 

She likes the person in her dream better. 

* 

That night, she makes sure not to forget her pills again. 

* 

She doesn’t dream. 

Nothing at all. 

* 

Days, and days, and days, and days go by and the dream clings to the corners of Vanya’s consciousness, calling to her. She can’t really put her finger on it but- 

But that dream- 

That dream was something else. 

It was the last time- hell, first time, even, that she's felt something like peace, like everything she knows and everything she loves in the whole entire world is exactly where it’s supposed to be, like she fits in, like she’s someone, like her love is reciprocated. 

Each morning she wakes up to awkward silence and uncomfortable moments, to hesitant conversations that turn into vicious arguments, she wakes up to standing in the courtyard and staring at Ben’s brand-new statue and not shedding a single tear through the grief. 

Her family’s broken. 

It’s like living among ghosts, echoes of what they used to be. 

She goes to bed every night wishing she could escape to that dream of hers. 

* 

One day, another day, it happens. 

She’s in bed, she’s comfortable, she’s warm, she’s sleepy. 

She had a weird fight with Diego earlier, the most words they’ve crossed in months, over practicing her violin after hours. He said he didn’t want to listen to her shrieking at midnight in his own house, said he needed to sleep at some point. She said it was her house, too. He said that was up for debate, since she wasn’t a part of the Umbrella Academy. 

It left her tired, worn, not physically, but somewhere in her goddamned soul. 

It left her aching for Five, for some reason, because back when he was still around and one of their siblings (or even Dad, really) started giving her shit, Five would always do what she couldn’t bring herself to and shut them up for once and for all. 

Had he been there with her, with Diego- 

He probably would’ve said something. 

Something witty. Something smart. Something other than an undignified little whimper and an ungraceful stumble while trying to pull a disappearing act. 

That whole scene left her tired. 

She’s in bed already. 

She’s comfortable, she’s warm, she’s sleepy. 

She forgot to take her pills. 

This time, she doesn’t give it much thought. 

It’s just the night dose. 

It’s just the one time. 

It’s not like she’s going off her medication altogether. 

She’s not gonna get up from her cocoon of blankets for a single dose, it just makes no sense to do so. Besides-? Last time-? 

She was fine. She was fine. No mental breakdowns or anxiety attacks whatsoever. 

She was completely fine, wonderful, even. 

* 

Vanya wakes up. 

She's not in her bedroom. 

The bed she’s lying in feels like a dream, soft and large and just right, comfortable. She stretches, enjoys the feel of the sheets against her limbs, bites off a smile. 

She sees it when she sits up, the oval window. 

The sight of it sends her heart racing, makes her want to scream with joy- she doesn’t really let herself get too giddy, though, because it’s a dream- it's just a dream, and dreams change, dreams are not fixed, dreams cannot really be the exact same, day after day. 

Still, she gets up, slowly, carefully, feeling far calmer this time around. 

The room is truly beautiful. 

It feels like the exact type of place she would want for herself, decorated the way she would do it, if she had the eye or the confidence for it. It’s cozy, and charming, inviting. 

Then she walks up to the closet and explores it for a while, and she’s never been particularly into fashion or anything like that, but even she can appreciate the nice fabrics and pretty colors, thinking mostly about Klaus and Allison, about all the fun that they’d have here. 

She picks up a button up, baby blue, and puts it on. 

It’s  _ so _ nice. 

Her siblings always get lots of civvies, from their interviews and their photoshoots and whatnot, and Vanya just- doesn't. She’s stolen things here and there, from their closets, things they no longer wanted or needed, but- she only really has her uniform, her skirt, and her jacket. 

She doesn’t like skirts. 

The jacket is uncomfortable. 

She’s never had something that’s hers and hers alone. 

So she puts the shirt on, walks out of the room. 

It’s not like last time, when she didn’t understand what was happening and she moved through the hallways with an edge, desperate to figure out what the hell was going on. 

This time, Vanya walks with purpose. 

She skips the stairwell entirely, walks over to the right wing until the pattern on the floors changes and she’s surrounded by that cluster of bedrooms that only ever had one single inhabitant in the entirety of their history. She walks up to the right door. 

Five’s door. 

She- 

She hasn’t really been to his bedroom in-  _ years _ , probably. 

Years. 

Years, and years, and years. 

She used to spend more time in there than in her own bedroom, a lifetime ago, first because Five was her best friend and his very larger room was the better place to hang out out of the two, and then- 

Then because he was gone. 

Gone, to never return. 

Vanya would spend entire days locked in Five’s bedroom, waiting for him to come back. 

He never came back. 

She stopped going into his bedroom, one day. 

Now, she- 

She doesn’t knock, because she doesn’t think she could take it, if there wasn’t an answer, but she does reach forward, twists the knob a little too slowly, opens the door a little too fast. Then she steps inside, holding her breath for some reason, eyes tightly shut. 

When she opens her eyes, it’s- 

“Oh, hey, Vanya.” 

It really doesn’t matter that she saw him a couple days ago, a couple weeks ago, in that other dream. It really doesn’t matter, because the sight of Five, curled up in his chair, in his desk, hair disheveled, idly scribbling into a notebook without a single care in the world, that sight is- 

It takes her breath away. 

She chokes out a pathetic little noise, a whine. 

Five looks up at her curiously, probably wondering what the hell is wrong with her that she can’t reply to his greetings like a normal person. She shakes her head, forces her lips into a smile, “I, uh-” she starts, awkwardly, “Hi. Hello.” 

Five huffs out something amused, rolls his eyes. “Hi yourself.” 

And he goes back to his notebook. 

Vanya walks closer, slowly, ever so slowly. 

The room looks pretty much like how she remembers it looking, like no actual effort to decorate was ever made on Five’s part, but still, somehow, his personality managed to make its way through the furniture and the surfaces and the walls and the empty spaces. There are some posters here and there she doesn’t recognize, a couple knick-knacks, but, for the most part, it’s the room her thirteen-year-old brother left behind all those years ago. 

Vanya looks at Five. 

“You don’t look thirteen.” 

He doesn’t. 

She hadn’t really noticed, last time around, but he really doesn’t. He’s taller- not leaner, because that’d just be impossible, but taller, his features a little more prominent, the roundness to his cheeks almost gone all the way. He looks- like he never left, like he grew up alongside them. 

He shrugs, smiles now, like he knows something she doesn’t. “And why exactly would I look thirteen, now, Vanya?” 

“I-I don’t know, why wouldn’t you?” 

“We’re the same age.” 

“Yeah, I know, but-” 

“But what?” 

Vanya breathes out, frowns, doesn’t really reply. 

Because you went missing, she doesn’t say. Because you walked out of the house and then never came back and you were a child and I don’t think you ever really knew how to time travel so something must have happened to you out there. Because you’re probably dead. Because you died a child. Because I remember you a child, and isn’t this a dream? Shouldn’t you look like how I remember you? 

Five’s eyes soften, and he reaches for her, squeezes her arm, “Isn’t it better this way?” he asks, like that’s a perfectly normal question, “Don’t you like it better this way? We’re the same age, we should look the same age. I thought you’d like it.” 

“I- I guess,” Vanya says, unsure. “I guess it’s nice. To see you. Like this.” 

He smiles, pleased. “Of course it is.” 

He goes back to scribbling. 

Is it nice, though? Vanya’s not all that sure. 

It’s weird, makes her a little uncomfortable, makes her wonder if this is  _ really _ what he’d look like, had he gotten to grow up, makes her wonder what unspeakable things happened to him, that he never got to grow up, makes her drown in that old grief, familiar, painful. 

Couldn’t this dream had given her an exact picture of the Five she remembers, so she could pretend it was a memory, no unknowable fates to poke at? 

But she tries to forget it, tries to let it go. 

It’s her brother, right in front of her, and she’ll take him any way she can. 

She leans over his shoulder, glances at that notebook of his. “What are you doing?” 

“Math,” he says, plain and simple, as if that’s enough of an answer. 

Vanya huffs out, really looks. 

The notebook is filled with nonsensical scribbles, numbers, and letters, and incomprehensible symbols, all neatly stacked next to each other, methodical, orderly. There are even some symbols she genuinely can’t identify, symbols she could swear she’s never seen before, not even in passing. 

They look like they’re some ancient language, forgotten. 

“Huh,” Vanya says, “That makes no sense.” 

The corner of Five’s mouth curls up, amused, conspiratorial, fond, and he speaks, softly, with a certain warmth, “It would if you were smarter.” 

Or maybe it’s just math, no underlying mystery. 

Vanya’s never really been great at math. 

“Oh, shut up,” she says, rolling her eyes, her cheeks heating up. 

Five looks at her. 

He looks at her and he hasn’t looked at her in almost five years, now, and she misses him, and she loves him, and she can’t really understand how she’s been going around living life without him. 

“I’ve missed you,” she says, suddenly, and she feels like crying. 

Five does not stop looking at her for a single moment, “I’ve missed you, too.” 

**Author's Note:**

> yes, this is kind of a coraline au, no i have no clue where this idea even came from but now i'm committed to it
> 
> follow me on tumblr @myeyesarenotblue


End file.
